We urge Trexta management to respect basic workers rights.

Workers in Trexta company in Turkey are forced to work long hours, without sufficient health and safety measures and workers can not get their legal right of severance pay. Between August and 12 November 2011 members and on 15 February 2012, 3 union members were dismissed because of their union work and membership. Other workers have been known to receive warnings by management not to join the union.

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Dear Colleagues,

We call support for Trexta workers who struggle for their right of organization.

In summer 2011, Deri-İş union (Leather Workers Union of Turkey) started its organising campaign at Trexta in Çerkezköy, a leather company producing mobile phone covers for international companies such as Blackberry, Nokia and Iphone and with a predominantly female workforce. (75 % of total 600 workers)

The employer responded with hostility and fired several female workers who joined the union for better working conditions. Between August and November, 25 members were fired. On February 15, 3 active union members were dismissed. (Semra Dag, Esin Kara, Aysun Kabakcioglu)

Deri-Is initiated a picket line in front of the factory and they will continue their struggle until they achieve their demands.

Their demands are recognition of the Union and reinstatement of the unfairly dismissed union members.

Since then Deri-İş mobilised international support which resulted in Nokia visiting and auditing the company in Turkey in November. Strategic research and organising campaign continue. Yet due to the employer’s anti-union campaign and limited resources of Deri-İş, activities can not gain full momentum. More support is needed to accelerate Deri-İş campaign which is located at the intersection point of the issues of gender, labour and human rights.

Report about our campaign in TREXTA and Raising of Women Workers’ Struggle

Dear Colleagues,

We would like to inform you about a recent organizing activity of our Union in a company called TREXTA. This is a big company that our organizing activities are important for the workers’ struggle both in locality and in national level. This is also important for the movement of the women workers.

TREXTA has three factories in Turkey: in Cerkezkoy, Istanbul and Sivas. They also have factories in China and India. In Turkey they have about 1.000 workers. About % 90 of the workers are the women workers. They are a member of ATRA GROUP.

They produce accessories, cases, bags for the mobile phones, cameras and laptops. They produce for many large companies. Their main customers are NOKIA, APPLE, VERTU and BLACKBERRY.

They also have along list of offices in all parts of the world that you can find as appendix at the end of the report.

a. Working conditions

- As we said, the majority of the workers are women. They face with intense exploitation and pressure. Their wages are 600 TL ( 270 Euro, 320 dollars) per month and they can not get their wages in total. Half of the wage is paid at the first week of the month and the rest is paid on the 3rd week. There are workers who work for 10 years and get the same wage with the new comers.

- They at least work for 12 hours. (Legally it is 8 hours plus 3 hours overtime work) However there is a forced overtime work. (legally there can not be forced overtime work) Workers could work 24 hours, 36 hours or even 40 hours. They also are not paid for the overtime work.

(a recent development is when management learned that workers were going to the union meetings, they gave up forcing workers to work over 10 hours but workers who refuse to overwork (about half of total workers) are under indirect pressure for instance they could not get salary increase while others could get a little bit etc. Additionally as a result of our activities, since December, management accepted to pay for overtime work)

- The repression, pressure and other methods of mobbing is applied over women workers. Workers could be punished or officially warned if they speak with each other, laugh or sit on a wrong seat inside the factory or pass the “red lines” that was drawn inside the factory.

- The employer has an anti-union attitude. Until now 25 workers were dismissed as a result of union activities.

- Company reported that there is a factory nursery to customers however there is no factory nursery-kindergarten inside the factory.

- Workers can not get their severance pay and they could get if they complain to the court.

- The doctor also collaborates with the administrator and threat badly to the workers, may not let them to go to the hospital etc.

- There are many job accidents that workers may lose their fingers or lose some functions of their fingers or hands however there is no investigation or severance pay in these cases.

- They can not use their right of leave with pay.

- The health conditions are in a bad situation. Air conditioning is not working.

b. Demands of the Workers

- Women workers are angry and decisive in changing these conditions and give an end to the slavery working conditions and they would like to unite in our Union.

- Workers want to use their right of collective bargaining, have better wages, work less hours and enjoy their fundamental and legal rights.

- Workers demand for reinstatement of unfairly dismissed union members. Until November, 25 members and on February 15, 3 members were dismissed.

c. Importance of supporting women workers

At this moment, workers are preparing to fight. We are waging an open struggle, visiting houses, distributing leaflets in front of the plant. Our union did not initiate a picket line until now after the dismissals because we preferred to give priority to raise our organizational level.

However we need international support. We need to coincide our local resistance-movement with national and international campaigns and all should work in coordination.

This is important because the resistance-struggle will be the resistance of the women workers against slaveryworking conditions. This would be a part of movement of international women workers. Hundreds of women workers would join to this struggle.

An international campaign is necessary to beat the employer in a short time because they took large amount of orders from NOKIA, Apple and Blackberry.

Workers in Trexta company in Turkey are forced to work long hours, without sufficient health and safety measures and workers can not get their legal right of severance pay. Between August and 12 November 2011 members and on 15 February 2012, 3 union members were dismissed because of their union work and membership. Other workers have been known to receive warnings by management not to join the union. ----------------

Re: Violations of workers’ rights at the Trexta manufacturing facility in Çerkezköy, Turkey

In 2011 Deri-İş, the union which represents the workers at Trexta Manufacturing Facility in Çerkezköy Turkey, started an organising campaign with the legitimate aim of improving the working conditions. Unfortunately this was apparently met with hostility from Trexta management.

Between August and 12 November 2011 members and on 15 February 2012, 3 union members were dismissed because of their union work and membership. Other workers have been known to receive warnings by management not to join the union.

We are also informed that workers are forced to work long hours, there is no sufficient health and safety measures and workers can not get their legal right of severance pay.

1. We urge Trexta management to respect basic workers rights. Freedom of organization and freedom of collective bargaining are basic rights of workers in world wide. Trexta company, which produces for international electronic companies, should not violate these basic rights.

2. Trexta management should take concrete steps to ensure that workers should enjoy their right of organizing. Workers should not suffer harassment or threats from the management.

3. We support union members' demands, as the recognition of the Union and the reinstatement of the unfairly dismissed union members, and will participate to the international campaign.